The approval given to an individual you have never met,
whose actual opinions you only guess at, based on their allegiance to a set of
ideas not all of which you agree with, or they don’t agree with altogether, and
which could change when they assume power.
The personal consideration of public issues presented as
arguments only loosely based on the common good but essential as matters of
marketing; consideration of these issues not as they pertain to anyone else,
but primarily to one’s own (never let it be said, selfishness) self-interest.
The demonstration of how the leader of a party, his
conceits and failings, his values and skills, are immaterial before the
overriding contest of two parties vying for the shifting attention of the
largest number of possible voters; or her conceits and failings, her values and
skills.
The proof that headlines hide the truth, polls are
pernicious deceits, columnists have their own agendas, bloggers are witnesses
to their own shortcomings, opinion-makers are heated as climate change, and
most people have made up their minds before the date is even set.
The lesson in how logic does not determine an outcome,
facts don’t get in the way of fictions, equations add up to what people want to
see, theories suffer from attention deficit syndrome, numbers in boxes never
total one’s true expectations.
The language that key egos preach as humble service; that
is a slogan concealing an ugly truth; that could go either way; that was
everything shouted from the rooftops and is now next to nothing told in secret.
The Saturday when the whole country goes cheerfully to its
fate, waits in line as the ancestors waited in line, expects more of the same
prosperity and disillusion; and, whatever the result that night, the Saturday
when the power to tax is given over again to politicians.
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